The left wing looks left wing, perhaps plucked from Pearl Street in Boulder. His beard is bushy and layered, weathered whiskers. He speaks softly about yoga, about breathing, about being present, and just when you think you must be talking with the wrong guy, he flashes a smile — and the missing front tooth reassures you that, yes, he’s indeed a hockey player.

Chemistry matters in hockey, and the cerebral Ryan O’Reilly provides a dose of serenity in the smelly boys’ club that is the Avalanche dressing room. He’s just different. And he makes a difference.

“He’s a quiet leader,” explained captain Gabe Landeskog. “And certainly one of the hardest-working guys on our team. He’s Mr. Yoga. I don’t know how to word it, but he’s certainly in-line with himself. Body and mind, it’s all in-line. And you can tell, he’s a very calm guy. He knows who he is, and he’s always himself. So he’s a great teammate, and a lot of fun to be around.”

In a nasty sport, O’Reilly is namaste. He floats on skates. Entering Thursday’s game, he had exactly zero penalty minutes on the season, yet leads the NHL in takeaways with 73, according tosportingcharts.com. Let that sink in for a second.

“You look at the amount of takeaways he’s gotten, all the stick lifts and all that, to not somehow get a hooking or tripping call, I think it’s amazing,” Landeskog said. “I bug him all the time about his non-existing hits and how soft he hits out there. He doesn’t lay out his body too much, but that’s the way he plays, and he’s certainly successful.”

Certainly. O’Reilly leads Colorado with 26 goals, while third on the club with 57 points. And while the team’s identity is a flashy flash, be it the blurring star speed of a Matt Duchene or Nathan MacKinnon, O’Reilly’s ability to complement leads to compliments.

“I haven’t seen a guy having so many takeaways as he does — his stick is, without a doubt, his No. 1 tool,” coach Patrick Roy said.

Perhaps. But perhaps his No. 1 tool is the utilization of yoga. You used to hear stories in the 1980s about big, fat football players taking ballet for footwork improvement. This is something at a whole other level. This isn’t a fad or a quick fix. This is part of O’Reilly’s being; this is part of being O’Reilly. Before every game, he’ll find a quiet room and do 15-20 minutes of poses. And he is constantly reinventing his yoga self, a process that began at age 14.

“It was one of the toughest things I do in training, and it still is,” the 23-year-old O’Reilly said. “And there’s no escape from it, it’s your own mental battle with it. You have to push yourself, and it’s great, you take your ego out of it. I just kind of fell in love with the internal look, looking inside yourself, to find out where you need to grow. I try to carry that over into everything I do on the ice.

“The first thing is — you learn how to breathe. And you’re focusing on inhaling and exhaling, you’re constantly bringing yourself into the moment. And, say, on the bench, when you’re constantly worked up, thinking about what you have to do and what I should have done, when you learn to focus on the breath, it brings you into that moment.”

Landeskog said his teammate always has a “smart opinion on things.” I can only imagine O’Reilly, a third party in a locker-room debate, suddenly bringing up the wisdom of spiritual writer Jiddu Krishnamurti.

“He’s a fascinating writer, his stuff is so deep,” he said. “I can only read like five pages at a time, and then I’m sitting there thinking — oh my God, this is me. It’s about internal psychology, constantly looking inside yourself, finding out how to be free of wanting. It’s similar to the yoga mind-set.”

But for however “yoga mat” O’Reilly is, he’s also “lunch pail” — he is routinely one of the last Avs on the ice after practice, working with MacKinnon on skill drills.

“I’d like to say he’s a mentor of our young rookie Nathan MacKinnon and even Tyson Barrie,” Landeskog said. “Tyson probably won’t admit it, but I think without Ryan, Tyson and Nate would be lost.”